


every year (we grow a little bit bolder)

by nightswatch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anniversary, Fluff, Friendship, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 16:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12084462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: Parse and Troy have a very special anniversary to celebrate each year.





	every year (we grow a little bit bolder)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morning_fern12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morning_fern12/gifts).



> Written for the fic giveaway I did on my blog :)

Jeff Troy plays his first game as Kent Parson’s center on February 15th, 2012.

It’s the year the Aces win the Cup for the first time in team history, but Jeff doesn’t know that yet. He was traded from Houston to Vegas last summer. The Aces put him on the third line and Jeff has been doing well enough not to end up in Reno.

For the time being, he lives with Parse. He is, tentatively, friends with Parse’s cat. He is, even more tentatively, friends with Parse.

Jeff has known Parse for years, played against him in juniors, and in the Aeros’ rookie tournament against the Aces the year they got drafted, and when the Aeros called him up after he’d spent one and a half seasons with their farm team, Jeff got to play against the one and only Kent Parson in the NHL. The Aeros lost spectacularly that night.

Now they’re on the same team and Parse is Jeff’s captain, and his roommate, also known as the guy who eats all his food, even when Jeff puts his name on it.

Jeff ends up on Parse’s line not even halfway through a game when Parse’s regular center collides with one of the Schooners’ d-men and barely makes it off the ice on his own. Coach Martinez taps Jeff’s shoulder and says, “Troy, you’re with Parson and Solberg.”

Between the three of them, they put five goals on the board that night. Jeff goes home with a goal and three assists, all of them on Parse’s three goals, and he feels like he just watched magic happen on the ice.

“That was… amazing,” Parse says as they drive home. He sounds like he can’t really believe it. Totally baffled.

“It was,” Jeff agrees. Maybe he should be offended because Parse obviously didn’t think he could keep up with him, but Jeff actually can’t believe it either.

“We should celebrate.”

“Now?”

Parse reaches over to give him a shove. “No, not right now, but…”

“Let’s just turn it into an annual celebration to commemorate this ridiculous night.”

He’s joking. He really is. Parse laughs and Jeff laughs right along and Parse turns up the radio and sings along. That’s it for their celebration.

But even though Jeff was joking, he sets a reminder on his phone for a year from now. He has no idea if he’ll even still be in Vegas, but if he is, he’ll bake Parse a fucking cake.

*

Jeff forgets about it.

With the lockout during the next season, with him playing in Switzerland, things are different. He and Parse send texts back and forth almost every day, but when he comes back to Vegas, everything seems strange to him.

His phone alerts him to his and Parse’s _anniversary_ in February and Jeff, because the thought is just so hilarious to him, bakes a batch of muffins for Parse while Parse is sleeping, a game on in the background that’s still scoreless when Jeff returns.

Parse is fast asleep with Kit snuggled up to him.

It’s Valentine’s Day, but Parse only scoffed when Jeff asked him if he had plans. Jeff would have done the same if anyone had asked him.

On the morning of the 15th, when Parse shuffles into the kitchen, Jeff hands him a cup of coffee and sets down a muffin in front of Parse. He sticks a birthday cake candle into it and lights it.

“It’s not my birthday,” Parse deadpans.

“I know.” Jeff grins. “Happy anniversary, Parser.”

“Happy– What?”

Suddenly, Jeff feels really stupid. He forgot about it and Parse has clearly forgotten about it, too. It’s not that important and–

“Holy shit,” Parse says and grabs Jeff’s arm. “It’s been a year since that game.”

“Yeah.”

Parse blows out the candle and smiles up at Jeff. It’s soft and barely-there and not the sort of smile Jeff is used to from Parse. “You do know that I’m expecting cake every year from now on, right?”

“Sure,” Jeff says and gets himself a muffin without a candle in it.

“Wait, did you make these yourself?”

Jeff shrugs. So he knows how to bake. It’s not a skill he’s been trying to show off.

Kent bites into it and moans. “Jeffrey, you’ve been holding out on me.”

Jeff shrugs again, but he’s secretly relieved that Parse isn’t making fun of him.  A lot of guys would. Parse just shoves the rest of the muffin into his mouth and asks for another one. Jeff shouldn’t be surprised. Parse has never been one to buy into rumors and he’s always the first one to tell the guys to shut up when their jokes cross the line.

Maybe one day, if he manages to stop being afraid, Jeff is going to tell Parse the truth.

*

The thing is, Parse beats him to it. He tells Jeff the truth first.

It makes things easier for Jeff.

It makes things easier for both of them, actually.

Jeff never saw himself as the guy who becomes Kent Parson’s new sidekick, but even when Jeff finds his own apartment and moves out of Parse’s place, they live in each other’s pockets. They have each other’s backs. They keep each other’s secrets.

Parse doesn’t tell him everything, not until a long while later, Jeff just knows that Parse has a lot of issues to deal with. On some days he deals with them badly. On other days he doesn’t deal with them at all. Jeff sticks with him, because that’s what friends do, and because Parse sticks with him as well. Parse trusts Jeff so much that he’s willing to share a secret that could fuck up his entire career if the wrong person found out.

Jeff doesn’t forget about their anniversary again. Even when he’s moved out, he drives to Parse’s and gives him a muffin with a candle in it, and a year later, when they’re on an East Coast roadie, he brings a candle and finds a bakery on the 15th of February to buy a muffin. It’s their thing and the smile that appears on Parse’s face every time Jeff doesn’t forget makes Jeff so ridiculously happy that he doesn't even know how to describe it.

Not at first anyway.

He understands it soon enough, the way he feels about Parse, but sometimes he honestly wishes he didn’t.

Jeff tries to leave all that crap at home when he goes to the rink, when he plays with Parse, when they hang out together, playing video games or watching movies, but sometimes he just doesn’t know how. When Parse is so close to him that they’re almost touching, when they fall asleep next to each other, Jeff starts to think about all the what ifs.  

He won’t _do_ anything, of course. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.

*

The thing is, Parse once again beats him to it.

It’s Valentine’s Day 2016 and they have a game in Vegas and the two of them single-handedly destroy the Aeros. Instead of driving Jeff home, Parse takes Jeff home with him that night to celebrate. They have the next day off, so they drink a couple of beers and they watch a romcom and Parse takes pictures of Jeff cuddling Kit for Instagram.

It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Not until Jeff goes downstairs to the kitchen to get some snacks and Parse follows him and they start digging through the fridge together. Parse is way too close to him, hand on Jeff’s arm to keep him from pulling all his disgusting leftovers out of the fridge.

“That’s gross,” Jeff says and pokes at a salad that’s slowly rotting away in a plastic container. “How long has that been in there?”

Parse grabs Jeff’s wrist. “Leave it.”

“Leave it to grow legs and walk out of your fridge by itself?”

Impatiently tugging at Jeff’s shirt, Parse finally says, “I’ll throw it all out tomorrow, I swear. After my appointment with Gina.”

“Does Gina know that you live like this?”

“Shut up, she’s my therapist, not my mom.” Parse pulls at Jeff’s arm. “And you’re not my mom either, come on.”

Jeff laughs and stumbles and suddenly he’s chest-to-chest with Parse and suddenly Parse’s hands are on his chest, and suddenly Parse’s lips are on his. Jeff didn’t see that coming. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t kiss Parse back, though.

He kisses him back until he realizes what exactly he’s doing here, until he realizes that they shouldn’t be doing this at all. Ever. Jeff pulls away, takes a step back, and… doesn’t know what to say. He closes the fridge.

“I’m sorry,” Parse says, but it seems more like a reflex than an actual apology.

“Parse…”

“I… Swoops. Don’t be mad, okay? I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“I should go,” Jeff says. Actually, he should stay and they should talk this through. The day after tomorrow they’ll have to be on the ice together and they’ll have to make sure the Aces win another game. Now is not a great time for things to be awkward between them. “I’m not mad. I just… need to go.”

“You–” Parse bites his lip. He nods and turns away. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”

It’s the _whatever_ that tells Jeff that Parse is pouting. A year or two ago, Parse might have thrown the rudest and most hurtful thing he could think of at Jeff, now he takes a deep breath and steps back and refuses to look at Jeff.

Jeff leaves quickly, Kit watching him from the living room, silently judging him. He stands outside Parse’s house and calls a cab and goes home.

He barely sleeps.

In the morning, he gets up and stares at the muffin ingredients he bought for the anniversary muffins he was planning on baking. He glares at them, and asks himself once again why the hell Parse had to go and kiss him without a warning and why the hell he can’t bring himself to call Parse to talk about it and why the hell he’s so scared.

Jeff spends all day trying to distract himself, but he fails to talk himself into putting away those ingredients.

It’s past seven when he finally can’t take it anymore. He grabs a bowl and angrily pours flour into it, dumps too much cocoa in it, and cracks the eggs with so much force that he has to fish little pieces of eggshell out of the bowl.

He’s mixing it all together, dough splattering his shirt because he forgot to put on his apron, when the doorbell rings.

Jeff leaves his dough on the counter and wipes his hands on his shirt because it’s too late to keep it clean anyway, then he shuffles to the door. He can see that it’s Parse through the glass panel in the door. Jeff can’t pretend that he’s not home, because the lights are on and because it’s not like he’d do that to Parse. He would have driven to Parse’s place with a muffin later on anyway.

He opens the door and Parse immediately says, “Wait.” He takes a muffin out of a bag, a candle stuck in it, then he pulls a lighter out of his pocket and lights the candle. “Happy anniversary,” he says and holds the muffin out to Jeff.

Jeff wordlessly takes it and blows out the candle.

“This is me apologizing, by the way,” Parse says. “Just in case that wasn’t clear.”

It was pretty clear. Jeff knows him well enough by now. He frowns down at the muffin. “Did you make this?”

“No,” Parse says, “I’m not trying to kill you. Or give you food poisoning.”

Jeff sighs. That’s also some kind of apology if you read between the lines. “You wanna come in?”

Parse doesn’t reply, he just slips past Jeff and kicks off his shoes.

With his muffin in hand, Jeff walks past Parse and takes him into the kitchen with him. He still has a bowl full of muffin dough to take care of.

“Look who’s baking,” Parse says, his expression annoyingly smug.

Jeff only shoots him a look and then turns his attention back to scooping dough into his muffin tray.

“So…” Parse hops up onto the counter. “About what happened…”

“Yeah, about that…”

Parse doesn’t say anything else until Jeff’s muffins are in the oven and he’s set the timer. Jeff isn’t used to this kind of patience from him, but as soon as he’s done, Parse says, “Yeah, so, you kissed me back.”

“I know,” Jeff says. He can’t look at Parse right now.

“Jeff.”

“Yeah?”

“Jeff,” Parse says again and it sounds so little like Parse that Jeff can’t help but finally look up.

Parse’s eyes are dark and focused. He’s not wearing his Aces snapback, so his hair is sticking up oddly and Jeff sort of wants to reach out and brush it out of his face. Or maybe he just wants to touch him.

“I know what I did wasn’t ideal,” Parse says. It’s like a Parse-y version of something Gina probably told him this afternoon. “And I have a lot of things to say, but…”

Jeff isn’t sure why exactly he thinks that it’s a good idea to take a step closer to Parse. The problem is that he wanted to do this yesterday. He didn’t really want to go home, he just thought it was the right thing to do. Now he’s starting to think that maybe it was the _sensible_ thing to do, but it definitely wasn’t what he wanted.

“But?” Jeff asks.

Parse doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. They both have things to say. And all those things will be said. Later.

It’s still just as much of a bad idea as it was yesterday, only today Jeff understands that his feelings for Parse won’t change anytime soon, and if Parse wants to kiss him, and he wants to kiss Parse, maybe they should just take a chance here.

Jeff hasn’t been living his life taking chances. He lived his life knowing exactly what he wanted to be and where he wanted to go. He’s here in Vegas, and he’s playing in the NHL, and his name is on the Cup. He chose this path knowing full well that he’d likely have to live a lie, and that he would, at best, live from secret to secret.

So maybe it’s time for something new. Maybe this is a secret that he and Parse can share.

Jeff steps closer, between Parse’s legs, and reaches up to run his fingers through Parse’s hair. He shoves away his doubts, just for a second, and that’s all it takes. He kisses Parse, kisses him until his lips start tingling, until his whole world is just made up of the two of them, nimble fingers and soft breaths, until he feels like there’s nothing more important in the world than this moment.

Then Jeff’s oven timer goes off.

He doesn’t let go of Parse right away, but he eventually has to because he doesn’t want to end up with pitch-black burnt muffins. He takes them out and carefully pries one of them out of the tin. They’re too hot to eat but he still takes the candle out of the muffin Parse brought him and sticks it into his own.

“Happy anniversary,” he says to Parse, and gets another kiss for his troubles.

*

For their actual first anniversary, Jeff gives Parse a goal in their only home game against the Falconers. They said they wouldn’t get each other any presents, wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, but it’s not like that goal was planned.

Jeff knows now. He knows the whole Jack Zimmermann story and even though Parse and Zimmermann at least sort of made up over the summer, they aren’t friends on the ice. Parse pulls him into what is likely the tightest hug of the season when Jeff scores the game winner about a minute before the end of regulation.

When they get home and Parse has snuggled up on the couch, Jeff gets the muffin he’s been hiding since yesterday, grabs a candle, and joins Parse. Jeff doesn’t live here, not really, but at the moment it feels like it’s just a matter of time.

They took things slow in the beginning, tried to figure it all out, and they make it work on most days. On some days it’s hard to hide it, on some days it seems easier to just quit.

“I’m sorry I somehow tricked you into thinking that I was worth all the trouble,” Parse said after their first fight.

Jeff doesn’t even remember what it was about, but that day he realized just how much he needs to remind Parse that it _is_ worth it. He needs to remind Parse that he chose him. That he’ll keep choosing him. He won’t walk away from this because of a ridiculous fight, because on some days, on a day like today, Parse gets misty-eyed about a muffin and Jeff feels surer about him than he ever did before.

Parse clears his throat. “We’re still doing this?”

“I guess we are.” Jeff smiles at him. If it’s up to him, he’ll keep doing this every year. It’s a reminder, too. “Happy anniversary.”

*

Exactly one year later, they’re in New York, and Jeff has no way of baking anything for Parse, but that didn’t stop him in the past.

They’re sharing a room, even though they don’t necessarily have to. It’s just another one of their things. They’ve been sharing a room ever since they became friends. They were always hanging out in each other’s rooms anyway, so it made sense to them. The guys sometimes chirp them about it, but they’re not the only ones on the team who don’t want their own room. Sunny swears that he’ll lose if he doesn’t have a roommate. He doesn’t care who it is, but one time they lost when he had a single room and he’s not risking it again. He's been known to steal rookies out of their beds when he accidentally wasn't assigned a roommate. 

Jeff sneaks out before Parse’s alarm goes off and goes to the nearest place that sells muffins. It’s a Starbucks and Jeff buys one of the muffins that look closest to the ones he always makes for Parse.

It’s not perfect, but nothing about them will ever be.

He goes back up to their room and Parse is still asleep, but he blinks at Jeff when he closes the door, even though he was trying to be extra quiet.

Parse says something that sounds like, “Whu’s gon’on?”

“Go back to sleep,” Jeff says.

Parse grunts and pulls back the covers.

Jeff sets down the paper bag with the muffin. Parse’s alarm is going to ring in about five minutes, but Jeff still takes off his shoes and his jacket to crawl into bed with Parse. He’s still warm and sleepy and Jeff gently pulls him against him.

Parse groans. “You’re freezing.”

“It’s snowing,” Jeff whispers.

This is their longest roadie of the season and Jeff is starting to fantasize about going back to Vegas, to sparkly, beautiful, snowless Vegas, driving home with Parse in the passenger seat, blinking sleepily at the bright lights in the distance, coming home, lying in bed together. Just them. Their clothes on the floor, hands wandering, no need to hold back.  

They’ve told some guys on the team, but they’re not out to everyone, so the only place where they don’t have to lie to anyone is at home. Even if everyone knew, Jeff wouldn’t kiss Parse in the middle of the locker room. Unless it was just the two of them.

“Why were you outside?” Parse mumbles into Jeff’s shirt.

“You’ll see,” Jeff says.

Parse hums softly and snuggles closer. “Surprise?”

“Just a little one.”

“Oh…” Parse hooks a leg around Jeff. “Wait, it’s the fifteenth.”

“It is.” He kisses Parse and slips back out of bed again. Parse makes a noise that’s most likely a complaint, but he sits up to see what Jeff is doing anyway.

Jeff threw a handful of candles and a lighter into his bag before they left Vegas, so he fishes one out, sticks it into the Starbucks muffin he bought and sets it down on Parse’s nightstand.

Parse smiles at it, and then he smiles up at Jeff, waiting.

“Happy anniversary,” Jeff says and, after three tries, lights the candle.

Parse’s smile grows a little wider.

*

“So, where is it?”

“Where’s what?” Jeff asks. He puts the last plate into the dishwasher and turns around to look at Parse.

“You know what I mean,” Parse says and slowly shuffles over to plaster himself against Jeff.

They’ve been together for three years. Three years of sneaking around, of big and little lies, but also of a few truths here and there. The team knows now. They live together. They only hide as much as they need to. Tonight, to celebrate, Jeff cooked Parse dinner, and they actually ate in their dining room instead of in front of the TV, Parse’s feet pressed against Jeff’s under the table.

And because it’s their anniversary, Jeff does know what Parse means. “Okay, maybe I do know.”

Parse smirks, hands smoothing down Jeff’s shirt. “Thought so.”

Jeff gives him a kiss and says, “Wait here,” before he leaves Parse in the kitchen and gets one of the muffins he made yesterday from the pantry. It’s all prepared so he only has to light the candle.

He sets it down on the counter and watches a slow smile appear on Parse’s face. Jeff loves that smile. When Parse is smiling at him like this, he knows that, at least for a moment, all is right in the world. That smile makes him feel safe, like he belongs somewhere. Like he belongs _here_.

Jeff gets so lost in that feeling for a moment that instead of _happy anniversary_ , he says, “I really want to marry you someday.”

Parse only stares at him. Wax drips down the side of the candle.

Even though Jeff knows by now what he can say to Parse without thinking too much about it and what requires carefully chosen words, he honestly has no idea if that was the best or the worst way to broach the subject.

“You didn’t hide a ring in the muffin, did you?” Parse asks.

Jeff can’t help but laugh. “No, I didn’t.”

“Okay,” Parse says and blows out the candle. He smirks at Jeff. “Yeah. I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. As long as you keep the muffins out of it.”

“Okay,” Jeff echoes. It’s basically like Parse is giving him permission to propose. Someday. Without muffins. He leans over to kiss Parse’s cheek. “Happy anniversary.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)
> 
> I'm @zimmermaenner on AO3 if you want to drop by!


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